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Christmas present from Gretchen

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Hi all. There is much love for Gretchen Peters here in some quarters…on her excellent website she posts a free (usually) live monthly download which is always fab. As an early Christmas present she is making all 100 previously issued tracks available for those on the mailing list. If you are a fan you’ll probably already be on the list…if not, and are curious, you can find out why we are such devotees. Really she is one of the finest writers currently working, regularly issuing new material which is always excellent and touring. Sign up sign up!

http://www.gretchenpeters.com/news/

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  3. It’s worth noting that she never sends crap or spam and unusually I actually read it as it’s so straight forward and fun. Mind you I’m a fanboi – my admiration for Gretchen has no bounds!

    #shameless

  4. Just signed up. I have seen Gretchen 3 times in the last few years. She is without doubt one of the best songwriters on the planet.
    “Hello Cruel World” is one of my favourite all time albums. Almost every track on it is a classic. “Idlewild” is simply stunning.

  6. Although Twang, you mention her touring just at the time when she’s said she’s taking a break from it for a while after almost constantly being on the road for the last couple of years.

  8. Twang (et al).

    Shamefully, I do not own any of Ms Peters oeuvre…

    …should I get/start with “The Essential”, or work backwards from the most recent, or move forwards from the earliest?

    Sound advice appreciated!

    • I’d say any choice is a Win-Win, but I’d suggest start at the beginning.

      Her début album (by which time she had been an established songwriter for many years) The Secret of Life is a corker. Plus you get the revelation of What The Secret Of Life is. Her second album, simply called Gretchen Peters is not quite as good as the first but still contains many fine songs.
      Halcyon, her third is a cracker, including one of my favourites The Aviator’s Song.
      Burnt Toast and Offerings is her divorce album, but still has many moments of beauty.
      Which brings us to her tour de force Hello Cruel World. Simply brilliant from start to finish – especially the closer Little World.
      Her most recent Blackbirds is pretty good, but after Hello Cruel World was almost bound to disappoint.

      • I agree Carl. The first one, Halcyon and Hello Cruel World are my favourites but I love all of them. If push came to shove I’d probably say Halcyon is my out and out favourite. “The Aviator’s Song”, “Child of mine” and “This used to be my town”…wow, what stunning songs. But the three albums are very complementary actually – Secret of Life is quite up, Cruel World is pretty bleak and Halcyon is deceptively pretty till you listen to the words…

        But I expect the live batch will have stuff from all of them so maybe start there…

    • Are you by any chance a subscriber to BT internet?

      I am and I hadn’t received the link.

      I queried this and had a reply from them that they were getting bounced back by BT. They set up a Hotmail account to send the link to me.

      I am now a happy owner of the MP3s.

      I also did some online research and found I’m not the only person to have this problem. I have also found a friend in New Zealand has recently been getting bounce-backs. BT aren’t informing anyone that some arbitrary decision is being made on our behalf’s, and allowing it to go straight to Junk where we can make the decision for ourselves

      • Not quite, I’m with Plus Net, which I think BT own. My email isn’t with either, though. I get my email from a domain I have, forwarded to a gmail account.

        As I said, I got Gretchen’s January message today, but I suppose that doesn’t mean it worked in December.

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